Column

During my first career as a clinical pharmacist, I had the opportunity to work with a large number of physicians, nurses and other health professionals. Some of these folks were tremendous professionals and people, from whom I learned a great deal. I have always had a special affinity for surgeons, though they can be some of the prickliest and most challenging people God ever placed on earth! Part of this demeanor is that it takes a lot of chutzpah to cut open a living human body, mess about inside it for a while, and then sew everything back up again – kinda like nothing ever happened.

The world is always changing. Each day dawns a new 24-hour period which is different than all the days before, and different from all the days afterward. Weather changes, we age, our health changes (usually in small but measurable ways), our skin sloughs off (at least every 28 days), our hair turns grey and/or thins, our “to-do” list changes with things accomplished crossed off and new things added, the amount of daylight changes and hopefully our knowledge base changes through us getting a bit smarter about life. It’s why I don’t understand someone who looks at me with all seriousness and says, “Nothing ever changes!” or “She is never going to change!” The truth of the matter, as I have detailed above, is that everything changes all the time. Even people change – sometimes not quickly enough or in the way that we might prefer, but people do change. In fact, it is the basis for the belief in a God who can help us to change by loving us into something new and better. Think of how despondent we would feel if we really lived a life in a world that never changed. I can’t imagine anything more awful than that – in fact, I believe that would be one of my definitions of hell.